She has even come across cases of children born in the UK to migrant parents who find out they aren't officially British only when they try to go to university or get a job.

Benefits paradox

"We're picking up a lot of children or young adults who suddenly get quite shocked to find out they're not British, or they have no status," she says.

Image caption
Chrisann eventually got financial help for her course

"Some of these children were born in the UK.

"They're about 20 or 21 and about to go to university or apply for jobs and they're... utterly destroyed... by the fact that they can't carry on their lives."

Until 2008, migrant children who had spent seven years in the UK could apply to be British citizens.

In the present climate, it is perhaps unsurprising the rules have been tightened up.

Added to that, changes to immigration rules - introduced in 2012 - prevent young people without indefinite leave to remain in the UK from accessing student loans.

The paradox is that many of these young people, including Astou, can claim benefits.

"I'm being told: 'you can't go to university and get a career, but you can sit at home and receive money from us each week'. That confuses me," she says.

Astou is adamant that is not what she plans to do and says she is busy looking for a job, while her dreams of being a lawyer are on hold.

Court test case

Chrisann has been more fortunate.

LSE deemed her such an exceptional student it has given her a full scholarship to study law.

She is running a campaign Let Us Learn to help other young people like her.

"The state has already paid for primary and secondary and sixth form," she says.

"They are excluding so many amazing young people who will be a benefit to Britain - they will be a credit, they will pay taxes, and it will be better if they get a degree."

Lawyers are hoping to take a test case to the Supreme Court later this year.

It concerns another young woman, Beaurish Tigere, who came to the UK from Zambia when she was six years old.

She too has been denied a student loan.

The highest court in the land will rule on whether young people who have a right to be in Britain, but don't yet have permanent status, can access the same opportunities for higher education as everyone else.

The Home Office told Newsnight it would look at cases of young people with uncertain immigration status if they were brought to the government's attention.